Reading

"What are you looking for in your books? Is it ever permitted that this reading end?"

Books I got something out of. Recurring themes: agency and results, awareness, human nature, biography, and narrative and perspective.

Agency and results

• The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan - both actionable and profound
• Commencement Speech by Nassim Taleb – link articulated one of the most important things I’ve ever learned.
• The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal - stress = something I care about is at stake = meaning; in addition to fight or flight (or freeze), we can engage with tend & befriend & engage with a situation as a challenge. Choosing my stress response: “Do you need to fight, escape, engage, connect, find meaning, or grow?”
• Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa
• Hagakure by Yamamoto Tsunetomo
• Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevelin - effective decision making reference, esp. the lists of questions in the index
• Poor Charlie’s Almanack
• The Undisputed Truth by Mike Tyson
• Striking Thoughts by Bruce Lee
  

  "A gung fu man employs his mind as a mirror – it grasps nothing and it refuses nothing."

• Lee Kwan Yew (Interviews and Selections by Graham Allison) – to do what works, unconcerned with theories. Munger recommendation.
  

  "Anybody who thinks he is a statesman needs to see a psychiatrist"

• Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston - Interviews with great founders. I had a ton of highlights, but especially recommend the Max Levchin one.
• Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance - a meditation on personal agency
• Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink, Leif Babin
• The Laws of Lifetime Growth by Dan Sullivan, Catherine Nomura - excellent ideas
• A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley
• The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin
• Peak by Anders Ericsson
• The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero – great actionable steps for the creative process. S/o Léo for the rec
• The Practicing Mind by Thomas M. Sterner - excellent, but incomplete
• Mastery by Robert Greene. Interesting frameworks, asks great questions. There’s a companion volume with his research interviews with folks including Paul Graham. Recommend reading for concrete examples of ideas from the book.
• The Double Helix by James D. Watson – I had a ton of highlights re: the creative process of invention and discovery.
• The Start-up of You by Reid Hoffman
• The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss
• Essentialism by Greg McKeown
• Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker
• The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman
• Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss
• The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi – Notes from a master swordsman.
  

  It is not difficult to wield a sword in one hand; the Way to learn this is to train with two long swords, one in each hand. It will seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first.

• How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams
• Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy by Judd Apatow – I wish this had been a long form podcast.
• Anything You Want by Derek Sivers
• Masters of Doom by David Kushner
• Become a Straight A Student by Cal Newport – lol, but that you can systematize stuff

Awareness and clarity

• No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz - I don’t agree with all of it, but it helped me understand and apply a lot of my emotions and experiences, integrating meditation and the rest of my life.
• The Radical Acceptance of Everything by Ann Weiser Cornell - Similar to No Bad Parts but in some ways closer to how I view things / what’s worked for me. Very good.
• The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh – short, well communicated and effective. Great starting point.
• Shift Into Freedom by Loch Kelly
• Effortless Mindfulness by Loch Kelly
• No Self, No Problem by Anam Thubten - excellent if you find it at the right time
• No Self, No Prolem by Chris Niebauer
• Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
• Letting Go by David Hawkins - some kooky stuff, but very much worth reading
• Emotional Rescue by Dzogchen Ponlop - practical and good
• Awareness by Anthony De Mello
• The Deep Heart by John Prendergast
• As One Is by Krishnamurti
• On Fear by Krishnamurti
• Freedom from the Known by Krishnamurti
• The Book of Life by Krishnamurti
• Meditation by Ajahn Chah
• Atmamun by Kapil Gupta
  

  “Understand that you have a finite number of breaths left in your lungs. And with each passing one, you come closer to death.”

• Flight of the Garuda - “thinking of the key confirms the prison”
• Tao Te Ching
• Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn
• Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
• The Trauma of Everyday Life by Mark Epstein – offputting title, but had a fundamental concept communicated in a short phrase: “conceptual appreciation to experiential understanding.”
• Lying by Sam Harris
• Waking Up by Sam Harris
• A Path with Heart by Jack Kornfield
• The Wisdom of No Escape by Pema Chodron
• The Diamond that Cuts Through Illusion (sutra, Thich Nhat Hanh commentary)
• Blazing Splendor by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
• 10% Happier by Dan Harris
• What Makes You Not A Buddhist by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse – Clear writing
• Vivid Awareness: The Mind Instructions of Khenpo Gangshar by Khenchen Thrangu
  
  
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
• Letters from a Stoic by Seneca – Great.
• Enchiridion by Epictetus – very short read
  
  
• Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart by Gordon Livingston
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk
• Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday – Brilliant.
• One Last Talk by Philip McKernan - still reading
• Rising Strong by Brene Brown – brilliant.
• Braving the Wilderness by Brene Brown
• Daring Greatly by Brene Brown
• Under Saturn’s Shadow by James Hollis
• Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It by Kamal Ravikant
• Emotional Agility by Susan David
• Live Your Truth by Kamal Ravikant – corny title, good read
• Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny - interesting how the buddha becomes human again by developing attachment, the metaphor of gambling, engaging in risk and stakes
• The New Peoplemaking by Virginia Satir
• Be the Person You Want to Find by Cheri Huber
• Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach

Human nature

• Zero to One by Peter Thiel – hard to match it to any one of these categories. Stood out to me how succinct the writing is (ratio of words : big ideas)
• The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
• Troubled Blood by J.K. Rowling
• Lethal White by J. K. Rowling – Few books capture the human capacity for self-deception like this one. The discursive thought, the self-obsession, the self-sabotage – that lead to second hand lives. Like Casual Vacancy, it’s raw. The books are mirrors, and echo the cracking of ego that Mike Tyson’s autobiography captures so well.
• The First Man in Rome, The Grass Crown, Fortune’s Favorites, Caesar by Colleen McCullough. Historical fiction about the leaders who vied for power in Ancient Rome as the republic became the empire. Insightful on politics and psychology.
  

  “Wisdom was not a quality he associated with any Roman nobleman; Roman noblemen were too political in their thinking to be wise. Everything was of the moment, seen in the short term. Even Scaurus Princeps Senatus, for all his experience and his vast auctoritas, had not been wise. Any more than had the Piglet’s own father, Metellus Numidicus. Brave. Fearless. Determined. Unyielding of principle. But never wise.”

• The Lessons of History by Will Durant, Ariel Durant – Shane Parrish summary” .
• Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene – some good stuff.
• What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg – A meditation on youth, ambition, and the self absorption that tends to complete the triad. Both Sammy and Julian were broken. Good illustration of concepts from Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday
• The Neon Bible by John Kennedy Toole – he wrote this when he was 16
• A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean – I read it to improve my writing. Well written and poignant, though I skimmed parts.
  

  “One reason Paul caught more fish than anyone else was that he had his flies in the water more than anyone else. “Brother,” he would say, “there are no flying fish in Montana. Out here, you can’t catch fish with your flies in the air.”

• Dune by Frank Herbert
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole – We are all Ignatius J. Reilly. Loved this one for the writing and apparent absurdity. How many of our internal monologues are just as ridiculous as the one Ignatius vocalizes?
• Fallen Leaves by Will Durant – the chapter on growing old was great. I skipped the rest.
• Tribe by Sebastian Junger
• The Vanishing American Adult by Ben Sasse
• The Velvet Rage by Alan Downs
• The Bed of Procrustes by Nassim Taleb
• Maxims by Francois de la Rochefoucauld
• Conspiracy of Fools by Kurt Eichenwald – narrative of the Enron scandal. Munger recommendation.
  
  
• The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
• Elephant in the Brain by Robin Hanson, Kevin Simler
• Wild Life: Adventures of an Evolutionary Biologist by Robert Trivers
  
  
• The Truth by Neil Strauss
• Why We Love by Helen Fisher – Drives >> emotions was huge, citing Kanazawa was interesting. First chapter or two are pretty concept-rich. Maybe could read a summary instead though, or paper abstracts.

Biography and memoir

• Andrew Carnegie by Joseph Frazier Wall
• Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
• Not Fade Away by Peter Barton – amazing. Spent a flight reading this instead of prepping for the interview I had the next morning. This and When Breath Becomes Air pose similar questions, but this one’s answers overlapped better with my own where When Breath missed.
  
• Mortality by Christopher Hitchens – Hitchens on dying, as he died. Great writing, great anecdote on how he learned to write like he spoke. Ends with the notes for articles he died before finishing, showing his writing process a bit.
  
• Gratitude by Oliver Sacks - reflection on life as he died
• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
• I Got There by JT McCormick - chapter 4: when there is no “try”, all that’s left is “do”.
• Swimming Across by Andy Grove. Memoir of an incredibly determined and accomplished person who endured incredible hardship. Wow.
• Damn Right by Janet Lowe – Munger bio, worth reading
• Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero by James Romm – Emily Wilson’s Seneca bio got to the point quicker, but I’m glad I read this too. Learning about the man’s life makes his writing more potent. The hypocrisies, the compromises, where he was uncertain – that he struggled as we do. Ex. setting out on the cursus honorum (literally, “course of honour” - makes me think “rat race”), maybe for status or because it was how the culture defined advancement, its canal for ambition. Peel back thousands of years and we see that following a cultural narrative of success led to dancing for one’s life at the whims of madmen (ex. Nero). Uncritically chasing his will to power, influence, or importance burned him. Back to ourselves, examining what tracked success we ourselves are chasing, now with perspective. He faced choices & challenges like ours, and we can make wiser choices - ex. what next job or project we take, and understand what the consequences might look like by seeing a version of the feedback loop played out in his life.
  
  That he wrote The Moral Letters at the end of his life, after decades of honing his skill as a writer and maybe learning from some of these experiences. That when he finally tried to escape Nero, it was already too late. Rumi: ‘Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.’
• The Man Who Solved the Market – book about Jim Simons.
• Chaos Monkeys by Antonio García Martinez
• A Man for All Markets by Ed Thorpe
• Models of My Life - Herbert Spencer
• Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
• Rome’s Last Citizen – Great. Bio of Cato. Well written (sentence/mechanical level and story-telling level); complex understanding of characters/personalities; deeply enjoyed the broader themes and morals.
• Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
• My Fellow Prisoners by Mikhail Khodorkovsky
• Pimp by Iceberg Slim – Drives home the idea that the real wins in life come from long term games that compound your ability and intelligence. Short term games? Legal or not, respectable or not, high status or not, the result: “slick but not smart.”
  

  “I had spent more than half a lifetime in a worthless, dangerous profession. If I had stayed in school, in eight years of study I could have been an M.D. or lawyer. Now here I was, slick but not smart, in a cell.”

• My Own Country by Abraham Verghese
• Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
• I Can’t Make This Up by Kevin Hart – What does it take, day in and day out, to do great work?
• Father Fiction by Donald Miller
• The New New Thing by Michael Lewis

Narrative and perspective

• Three Uses of the Knife by David Mamet – good storytelling primer
• Story Structure Architect by Victoria Schmidt
• All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin
• Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss

Applied incentives and economics

• Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got by Jay Abraham – Faster to watch this video of him coaching. Digs into fundamental business primitives, applicable regardless of scale – ex. “Does $group actually want this?” Jay Abraham yields a fundamental for distribution – “Who owns the relationship?” with the audience you’re trying to reach. Great on risk reversal in selling and his idea of pre-eminence as well. Worth reading.
• Average is Over by Tyler Cowen

Writing

• The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker – Chapter 5 on “Arcs of Coherence” – is great on how to order and connect your ideas and structure writing, from the sentence level to the chapter level.

Haven’t categorized

• The Defining Decade by Meg Jay – Great. s/o to Richard for sharing
• Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham
• Fragments by Heraclitus